So, what do workers want? A new Washington Post/Ipsos poll asked over eleven hundred workers. Here’s some highlights:
About 8 in 10 workers are satisfied with their jobs, even as over 6 in 10 say work is stressful. While the desire to work from home is a priority for some workers, pay, having a good boss or manager, and other aspects of a job rank higher.
Roughly 4 in 10 workers say their jobs can be done from home. Among remote-capable workers, 40 percent are fully remote, 38 percent are hybrid, and 22 percent work entirely from the office or another workplace. That was 60% onside before the pandemic.
Seventy percent of employees working fully from home expect to keep it up in the next decade. But even remote-capable workers who work entirely in offices expect more flexibility in the future, with 61 percent saying they expect to be hybrid in 10 years. And why? Cutting out the commute.
What makes a job good? Most workers say that various factors influence their experience: their pay, their boss, health, and retirement benefits, amount of vacation, friendliness of co-workers, whether they’re helping people or society, options for remote work, and opportunities for advancement. When asked to rank the most important factors in a job, 45 percent put pay at the top. Having a good boss comes in second, with 14 percent of workers ranking it the most important.
Why do we care?
Small organizations can leverage their agility to create a more welcoming work environment. Want to attract talent? Job satisfaction and stress management, particularly in the high stress employment of IT. As a boss, your role is far more important than you might realize. Only pay tops that lit. Are you actively investing in your own management training to foster the skills required here?
And despite all that noise, workers are expecting to continue to have the flexibility of remote work. That’s telling.